How's it going everyone? This video is not sponsored, but this is not an officially licensed Disney Pirates of the Caribbean Black Pearl. It's just a black pirate ship square rigged massive brickuilt thing for which I paid $170 US. And that's $170 US shipped without any special sale for this 4,78 piece set. The completed ship here is almost exactly 4 kg or over 8 and 3/4 lb of plastic. The length from tip to tip is just short of 1 m or around 39 in. The height, meanwhile, is about 70 cm or over 27 in. You want to know about the part quality and the build experience, especially given that this has so many black pieces in it, and I'm going to tell you all about that. First of all, part quality is fine. Uh, it just really was not an issue for me whatsoever as I was building this. I tend to go for sets that have good quality. It's important to me. I will say that the clutch power or the the connecting power of these bricks is probably just slightly higher than what you might be used to. Some people, especially who have relatively weak weak finger tips, may find that to be a problem. I personally did not find it to be a problem. Uh except in just a few cases where they have some rather large plates that are used for some of the floors and ceilings where they really just have too many studs that you have to push together at one time. And that's that's more of a design issue than a part issue. For example, back here you have a fairly large flat surface that's actually stacked like two or three plates thick and there are no hollows inside of there. It it's all plates stacked on top of each other. So you have to push all those together. The sails are made of a semi- rigid thick vinyl material or PVC material which is printed on one side. It has somewhat of a satin finish to it. And I know some folks will be disappointed by that and only want cloth, but the nice thing about this is that it's very consistent and it came completely flat packed. Uh, you know, you you you go for cloth, especially with a a huge set like this without ridiculous amounts of spare, you know, kind of wasted packing material. Cloth is going to be completely crinkled up. Uh, traditional thin vinyl would also be crinkled up very badly. I think that this is just a valid decision for them to go with. But again, I understand and completely respect that some folks will not like this, will not, you know, will absolutely 100% prefer to have cloth in all cases. But nice thing about this is that it will stay in place. All the sails will will basically form into one specific shape and then just stay there forever. There's quite a bit of rigging here, but most of that you do at the very end is literally the last step with included cord that you cut and tie yourself. I'll show you a little bit more about that when I give you a peek at the instructions later on. Uh it's just a it's a long process, but it's completely completely optional. You don't have to do that at all because the sails are formed into their the shape that you see right here. The masts are held up just with regular plastic parts that don't require any special work. So here on the forwardmost mass for example, the topmost sail is attached with just a pair of these ball end pieces that go into Technic parts and then the bases are secured with cylinders, just one by one cylinders. Same thing happens here. Same thing happens here. And then the mast itself is mostly secured in place at its base with just normal pieces. It has some axles inside of it to keep it straight. And then you have shrouds on the sides. So these are this is a specialized piece right here. Has some small little adjustment length adjustment arms right in here. But ultimately this holds itself together well and securely. Incidentally, it's the port side here which you're looking at now where the little jib sails are printed. So, I started out showing you the least camera friendly side where you weren't seeing the prints, but there's a little bit more to be seen over here. Unfortunately, that is not symmetrical from side to side cuz again, the sails are only printed from one side. Uh, also, um, as I mentioned, the rigging is optional. All the the cordage work, it doesn't actually do anything. It doesn't none of it is is fully tensioned up to really have any effect on the the ultimate shape of the sails or anything. figure head is something that you build up from just regular pieces. One of the trickiest, I guess, one of the most variable parts of the build was just right in here because there are three tubes on either side that are flexible tubes that do have to be manually kind of fit into place. And then uh as you're as you're putting it together, they don't really want to be where you put them until you start connecting them in between with these these little spreaders in between which really help to kind of set the the bezier curves and hold them in place. The the anchors unfortunately don't have a good spot to really hold them. I guess I could just kind of stick that in there. There is a spot where I could put that in there, but it might get just a little bit wedged in just a little bit too much. Um, they actually do have windlesses that can be retracted. So, you can turn those up here, but they they don't have anything to hold them in place. So, pretty much you're going to see throughout all of this, anything that you see, sorry, I'm going to have a little bit of trouble with the focus, but anything that you see is what you get. And that's just how it is. You know, there's not a whole lot of reconfiguring of things involved with this. You can open and close the gun ports, but if you close them too far, you might find that it's a little bit difficult to to find the spots to to open them back up. You might want to use like a flathead screwdriver or something to get in there. Incidentally, these cannons will fire. They're the firing type. You have to put them together. They come in just a handful of pieces. They give you a little spring and everything. The the full firing type, these big ones, but you can't really access that space. Uh, more on accessing the interior space in in just a minute, but just trust me when I say now, you're probably never going to even attempt to fire these. I actually very much like the smaller deck guns and how they're built. And it's nice that, you know, they actually were assembled. They they're not just using specialized pieces. They don't actually do anything. Uh, a few times along the the process of building the ship, you do make a number of these. So, you just want to kind of set up a little little miniature assembly line for yourself cuz the builds for each of these are identical. And here's just one little spot where you can see the the interior. So, I can actually push on this here and the hold opens up. And there on one side, you can see one of the functioning cannons on the deck just behind that. You've got a single dinghy in just a plain black color with the OS actually attached there. So, they're not going to go anywhere. Just a of the middle or main mast is a staircase to allow minifigures to be able to go down below to the lowest deck to the gun deck in this case. And no figures are included with this set, but I figured I would bring in just a random minifigure for the sake of scale so you get a little bit of idea of what we're dealing with here. And just to the after that is the main door that lets you into the cabin space and ultimately to the captain's quarters behind. Now, it's going to be unreasonably difficult to see this, but right now there's a light on inside the cabin. That's right. This set has lights. Technically, if I can get this to angle just right, you might catch a little bit of glint of light on this cannon from the inside. Maybe you can see a little bit of light around these cannons. You can definitely see it through the hold there now. At least when it's open. Wait, I found an angle. Look, look right in there through the door. You can see a little bit of the interior detail. It's just slightly lit up maybe. Oh, yeah. You can you can just see it. You can see it just a tiny bit through these windows, too. If you look really really carefully through the grates, honestly, the lights in this are a total afterthought. They put them in there literally just to be able to say on their product pages. It includes LEDs because so many people who are looking for brickbased things these days want to see lights, want to see LEDs because some of the best companies that that do these sets have started including lights and it really is just a checkbox thing. I personally would recommend not installing the lights because you know what, the wiring is not great and it precludes the removal uh the easy removal of the various decks here because by default when this is built in its most basic form, you can remove the forward deck, the mid deck, the the poop deck. This actually has three different layers to it. There is a captain's cabin back there with some detail with an actual desk and everything and a a nicely built up map, you know, scroll. It's like there's some stuff inside of there. But with the lighting, the lighting wiring which comes all the way up to the top of the poop deck here to provide lighting to that space. It's very, very difficult to take it apart. Again, you kind of want to have three or four hands. I just very strongly recommend not doing it. It's also more difficult to take this apart once you do the full stringbased rigging here, the chord-based rigging. If you don't put that optional stuff on, then it's much easier to take things apart. But as it is right now, many things are kind of tied together literally. And so that's why I'm actually not going to show you the interior here because I have built this fully per the instructions. And the interior honestly is not accessible anymore. So it's just not a feature that uh you get value from. It's not a a feature that you've paid for in this case. Well, technically you've paid for, but you haven't gotten it. And so I'm not going to show it to you. I'm not going to take this thing apart to show you something that you're not even going to be able to see when this is built to its standard full form. I can give you a little sneak peek, though. If you did not put in the electronics and rigging, you would be able to easily pull off whole large sections of deck to expose the gun deck and all of the guns, as well as a little treasure chest with nothing in it, I'm afraid. There's the mid deck central cabin space with some storage, including another treasure chest with nothing in it. And that includes the captain's quarters. And the captain actually has a cat, which I'm sorry, you're not going to be able to see in person. Eventually, that gets segmented off with walls with archways as well. From the outside, behind the wheel, they even have these nice windows there. And maybe, just maybe, you can see a little bit of suggestion of the light peeking through. Meanwhile, this uppermost, to use the proper nautical term, poop deck, has a skylight on it. However, unfortunately, that is completely opaque underneath two layers of transparent clear pieces. There's just a white plate. Again, ultimately, the interior space on this is a total bust unless you build it without the lighting and without the extra tied together cordage and rigging. For folks worried about the instructions and the build process, this is 2 and 3/4 lbs of instructions right here, instruction manuals. I personally did not have any issue with the clarity of the instructions in spite of the fact that so much of this is made with just black pieces because the instructions are clear. They outline the black pieces with white everywhere. Wherever you're putting new pieces in for a given step, they outline those with red. And in some cases, they will show you multiple angles of the same thing. if you're doing a mirror portion of a build, uh, you know, there's there's something that might be partially hidden in one version of kind of the standard angle, which I appreciate. And they have a habit also of showing you the sizes of the plates or tiles as you put them in. So, for example, here, not only at the top where they're showing you what's going to be used, but right there where you're actually placing the piece, they'll show that, especially if you have multiple parts that are somewhat similar in the same bag. You know, if you got 1x six's, 1x8s, 1x10s, 1x4s, this is going to be showing you exactly, you know, kind of confirming for you exactly what you should be using at each point, not only up there, but also in the actual assembly itself. The trickiest part is definitely doing the rigging because you do have to cut the string. They give you one single length of cord and they give you plenty of extra so if you make mistakes along the way, you should be able to fully recover, but it is a whole lot. You do have to tie the the ends and you just kind of have to, you know, look at the lines pretty carefully in here. I did make one mistake uh in the rigging didn't make a big difference and these are not structural at all. Again, the thing that I liked least about the build process is that the number of bags per per mega bag. There's like a large bag at a time that will have many small bags within it that you open up. And the number of bags and parts that you have in front of you at any one given time is pretty overwhelming. I found that it was very important for me to presort the pieces every single time just based on kind of function and or size to make it make more sense for me because it was just so many pieces used at any given time or available at any given time. I apologize for the awkwardness of speaking to you through the rigging here, but I'm a little bit limited in space and I do need to speak near the microphone which is just off screen here. Anyway, do I feel good about this set? Yes, absolutely. And again, I paid $170 US for it. When I bought it, though, it was under a different brand name. It was under the Missini name. And I've talked about this many times before, and I'll continue to talk about it in the future. A lot of people aren't aware of the reboxing uh phenomenon there. It's just in in this space when you're looking at alt alt bricks. There are a lot of companies that will simply re rebrand things. It's kind of a syndication sort of setup. It's just a very very common practice in amongst Chinese companies. So yeah, I found this one under the Mini name under the Rio bricks name. It's as of the recording of this video, it's 190 US on Amazon, but then there's a $10 coupon that doesn't require it doesn't have any requirements. You just take 10, so it's 180. Cheapest I found it is uh as of today was on barweer.com for approximately 160 like 161 162 uh shipped to the United States. Um if you're looking for something in particular, browse around, you know, look look look for pictures of the exact thing. You might find it under a different brand name. You might find it cheaper uh with shipping either within or to your region. I will however go back to acknowledging that there are many things about this that plenty of people won't like, right? There's no there's no reason to freak out about that. It's just a fact of life. Not everybody likes all things. And let me acknowledge some specific things to not like about this. For example, the fact that it is mostly black. A lot of people won't want that. Want more color to a thing. Uh especially I heard while I was building this live on Twitch and here simultaneously um over the past handful of days uh heard some folks who would prefer to have the deck be brown. I agree with that. I think it would look better with a brown deck, especially a a dark brown colored deck, you know, just have a little a little bit more contrast there. Some people would not like the fact that this is not black enough that it has some gold pieces in it because again, it's not intended to be a licensed replica of the Disney Black Pearl. It's not going for that. It's just a a black colored um pirate ship. And yes, they put the Black Pearl name on there just to get more clicks on on the thing, but ultimately um it just is what it is. And if you're looking for an exact replica of a particular ship, uh this just isn't going to be it. I don't think this is a specific replica of any individual ship out there. And the the gold that's on there is there, you know, and some people won't like that. the material of the sails. I told you I feel that it's legitimate for them to have this when I brought out um my other Rio bricks shipped to compare to this. By the way, a lot of people live for size comparison. So, here's a little bit of footage just quickly looking at at that one. That one has cloth sales and they're just kind of not nice. I definitely prefer this better. And here's another company's uh ship that cost $60 more than this or was it like 33 34 35 over 30% more than than this and yet it's it's smaller um by quite a lot and has far far fewer pieces. What else is there to not like about this? Oh um having to do your own rigging if you want to. They didn't provide a simpler way to do that, but again, it's this is completely optional. So, you don't have to do it. If you don't want to do all this kind of extra rigging to make it look a little bit more realistic, a little bit more detailed, you just don't have to do that. Again, it's the very last step. So, just skip it entirely. And then if you do skip it, then you get much, much easier access to the interior. Speaking of which, if you do the rigging, then you have worse access, more difficult access to the interior, and you probably just don't want to access the interior, honestly. Um, it's it's that much more difficult. Just awkward just managing all all the all the stuff there. If you don't put this on there, then you have pretty easy access to the interior. But the interior does not have a whole lot of detail in it as I showed you. Um, so that's definitely a a potential negative against this. does have 478 pieces that they put into making what you do see here. But if you want more focus on little interior stuff that's definitely clearly objectively lacking here. And then the lighting again is totally an afterthought. It's just a check mark. This has lighting. Yes, that's it. It's it's not good. Period. I don't recommend using the lighting. Uh one thing I didn't even mention to you is that the battery boxes, there are two of them. um they're built into the hull. So if you do use the lighting, if you do like it for some reason, even though you can barely see it, and you leave it on for a day, the batteries are going to run out and then you need to disassemble part of your hull to get the battery boxes open and then swap those out. And they don't have any they do not have any USB or continuous connection or anything like that. One thing that I on the very good side that I did not tell you up to this point is just the the strength. So, I told you the weight of this, but it's it doesn't just have mass. It has density. It has strength. It has rigidity. The lower portion of the hull before you start putting more decks on top is stronger than it needs to be. Honestly, it's significantly stronger than it needs to be. This thing can be used as a blunt force weapon. But the good thing there is I have no worries about this falling apart. None. Zero zip. Zilch. Nada. just it is so strong and the decks that you add on on top are well secured as well. Definitely feel better about this one than my other Real Real Bricks ship. This is definitely built better than that one. It's designed better than that one. Um the rigging even without the the strings added on just the with the shrouds and stuff and the the Technic style linkages with the axles and things. Those are all just aligned better, I think, on this. Uh there's actually a little bit of tension in the shrouds themselves. That feels good. Uh depending upon exactly how you angle this, you do have to be careful about the the front to rear angles uh because they don't have they don't have any there's no force stay or back stay. There's no front to back tensioning. But as a as a result, you can get the the I mean, right now it kind of looks like it's facing forward and that's because I have it slightly up here. But you can get the mass to be uh angled a little bit uh wrongly and that can start to mess mess up the connections down here. But you can just kind of massage that into place to where it sits and it sits comfortably. Ultimately, again, this is so little money for so much stuff. It's such a mess. It is epic to look at. uh plenty of things that you can nitpick about it, but um I think a lot of people would really really enjoy this when I took this up and showed it to my wife when I've showed it to u you know viewers who were seeing it as I was building it live. Uh sorry about the extra sounds there. This is just beyond the edge of the range that I have here. A lot of people have looked at this already and just were like just wow wow. So, um, yeah, if you're looking for things negative about it, there are things to see for sure. And I hope that I have clearly called out a bunch of the potential negative things, but the net for me is absolutely a very very very strong positive with this, especially especially the value. You know, when just just days ago, the the biggest brand, the most known brand in in the world, the Danish brand, announced their officially licensed actual Black Pearl, which was is more accurate to the movie was actually actually trying to be accurate to the movie version. Does come with some minifigures, but it also cost $210 more than this. More than twice as much as this, and has like 1,800 less pieces. That is a significant delta. A very significant delta. Will a lot of people want that over this still? Yes, absolutely. Because size is not everything. Mass is not everything. Some people will like the look of that better. The fact that it has the brown deck, doesn't have gold accents or is an actual licensed, you know, thing from from the mo from the movies or a movie and also comes with the minifigures. You know, those are all valid things to to like. But for me, this was the choice that I made personally, and I'm very, very happy with it. And I hope that I've brought you some value with this video. So, thank you for watching. Thank you for your support. Thank you especially to all of my channel members who have signed up over here to help. And all the folks who use the affiliate links in the video description if you want to purchase something. I am not here to try to sell you stuff, but if I do show you something and you like it and you want to buy it, if you can consider using one of my affiliate links, I can get a small commission back. Doesn't have any effect on you unless one of them is is tied to a a discount. Some of them have discount codes involved. So, you might actually end up paying less, but you definitely never pay more and it doesn't it doesn't uh require any additional action from you. click a link, browse around on a site, anything that you purchase that day or at least within that session has a potential to give me a tiny tiny kickback which I then just put right back into the channel. That's how I bought this was through y'all hitting affiliate links for various things from different manufacturers. So again, thank you very much for your support. I hope I'm continuing to bring you good value with these videos and I will u try to only improve and do more. Bye for now.